New Zealand Grid electricity - contains calculated potential enviromental impacts as a result of possible future scenarios published by MBIE (2016). These have been calculated based on an LCA model of New Zealand low voltage Grid electricity developed by Sacayon Madrigal (2015).

BRANZ welcomes data from industry providers that will add to and/or improve the data presented here. To find out how to do this, please click here.

Datasheets (activity/scenario data)

Datasheet data are generic i.e. they do not relate to specific building products, and therefore are aimed for use in early design when decisions on specific products are less likely to be made.

The data are presented in Excel. Each datasheet has a worksheet that provides guidance on the structure of the datasheet, and how to use the presented information. BRANZ recommends that you read this prior to use.

Datasheets may be useful for other LCA applications. It is up to the user to determine the suitability of the data for these other purposes.

Available datasheets are:

Construction transport (module A4): Generic transport distances of construction products by mode from the last manufacturer, fabricator or assembler to a construction site in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Construction site waste (module A5) : Construction site waste generation rates by material. Data is also provided on subsequent fate in terms of reuse, recycling, recovery or landfill.

Operational energy (module B6): Defaults for simulating energy use in buildings. It is important that these defaults are used in energy models of designed buildings in order that the reference building results are comparable.

Building end-of-life (module C1): "Current" and "best practice" data on fate of construction waste at building end of life. Data for "current" practice should be used as the default.

The methods used for development of these datasheets are set out in the BRANZ SR351 study report.

Construction materials embodied environmental impacts

BRANZ CO2NSTRUCT is a source of data containing embodied greenhouse gas and embodied energy data for construction materials and products. The data in BRANZ CO2NSTRUCT are derived from several sources which are provided in the database. All data are additionally provided with a data quality metric.

Care should be taken when basing decisions on data for embodied environmental impacts only, as this does not consider the full life cycle.

New Zealand Grid electricity environmental impacts

MBIE (2016) provides five future scenarios for New Zealand Grid electricity from now to 2050. These are based on assumptions about GDP and population growth, and prices of carbon and renewable technology.

Using an LCA model of the New Zealand Grid developed by Sacayon Madrigal (2015), these five scenarios have been evaluated, with the results available below: